A brief history of video streaming

‍With YouTube and JWPlayer, video streaming took off in a big way. Me at the Zoo [2005, 184 million views] ushered in an era that could not have developed more rapidly. Others quickly got into the business, but some failed to keep up. The evolution led from an 18-second clip in 240p resolution, whose loading time normally exceeded the playing time, to feature films in 4K resolution that can be played instantly.

The beginnings

After YouTube was launched in 2005 and bought by Google as early as 2006, a new era of Internet use was heralded. Other companies also wanted to take advantage of the new technology and the hype surrounding video platforms to establish themselves as early adopters, i.e., companies that used this technology, which was still new at the time. Remember Clipfish and MyVideo? Just two of the few providers that benefited only briefly from the hype. In the meantime, there are only a few platforms with similar business models besides Youtube. In addition to Dailymotion and Vimeo, which are among the providers that have managed to fight their way to the top, the major social media are now also trying their hand at their own solutions. As far as content is concerned, a lot has changed in the last 17 years. Today, we watch videos in 4K resolution on all smart devices in the house, and without any loading times at all.

From long loading times to binge-watching

At the beginning of the video streaming era, users had to wait longer for a video than the actual video was long. This, of course, ensured that the retrieval of content was limited. But only a short time later, the film industry recognized an opportunity to bring films and series to home computers via the Internet and thus generate more sales. Initially, there was also the problem of long buffer times until the film was finally playable. As more and more providers specialized in movie streaming, better solutions quickly developed. Initially, platforms such as Videoload, Maxdome and Premiere offered the first VoD services with smaller flat rates - until 2014, when Netflix, the first streaming giant and also flat rate provider with a larger offering, launched in Germany. Since then, other studios and niche providers have also ventured into the streaming war. Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu & Shudder are just a few of the numerous providers you will find on the market today. Even larger media brands and TV stations like PLAYBOY, FREUNDIN or funk offer their own media libraries with numerous contents on demand.

From long production times to live streaming

The last major development came from the use of live events by numerous vendors. Livestreaming quickly emerged as a way not only to achieve greater reach, but also to sell tickets to viewers who were not on site.

The first live stream was played out by the band "Severe Tire Damage" via a small network as early as 1993. This only slowly developed into a larger market. It wasn't until 15 years later, in 2008, that YouTube launched YouTube Live, a larger offering that also showed Felix Baumgartner jumping out of space in 2012. At that time, ten years ago, however, there was still a proud twenty-second delay. Today, livestreaming is so mature that providers are mainly focusing on latency mitigation solutions. Today, live streams can be achieved with minimal latencies of up to just one second.